Accidentally His is my foodie book, if there ever was one. After all, food is Verity’s life. In the process of researching, I discovered this wonderful site called The Foods of England Project, which contained 60 out-of-print historical cookbooks, and thousands of recipes and dishes, with their histories. Unfortunately, the site is no longer in existence, although Glyn Hughes, the person who created it (now deceased), has a couple of delightful cookbooks on Amazon, one of which is called The Lost Foods of England. One of the dishes I used from the site was Mussel and Onion Stew, which is Rafe’s favorite. It comes from the West Country, which is where Rafe grew up and Verity’s father still lives. I’m not fond of mussels myself (which is odd, because I like just about every other shellfish), but I stumbled across the recipe and thought it might be fun to include. And there’s Duke’s Custard at the end of the book (that recipe comes from Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery)! It shows up in the epilogue, but I call it trifle because that’s really what it is. Now, that’s one I’d love to try.
